About The Tim

Tim Ellis is the founder of Seattle Bubble. His background in engineering and computer / internet technology, a fondness of data-based analysis of problems, and an addiction to spreadsheets all influence his perspective on the Seattle-area real estate market.

RE:wreckingbull @ 3 – I’ve been trying to talk the wife into planting a fruit tree, but part of the inaction is due to not knowing what I want. I hadn’t considered a nut tree. Any suggestions as to what would do well in a full sun, fairly well drained but poor soil environment? And please don’t suggest a pfft tree.

On this topic, I’ve never understood people who will buy a wooded lot and then clear the entire lot to build a house. If you don’t like living around trees, why buy a lot that is surrounded by trees? But beyond that, it makes for a rather ugly lot. You need to leave at least a few trees.

Soil does need to be well drained, though. They can be pruned into a tree or kept as a bush/hedge. You want to get a few varieties so they pollenate properly, and I believe the ones sold by Raintree are blight resistant. They will ship them to you via Fedex. Give 10 or so a try and see how it goes.

RE:Kary L. Krismer @ 5 – In the PNW, if you buy a lot with good 2nd growth fir, the lumber you can mill is going to be much better than most kiln-dried stuff you will get at a lumberyard, so there is some benefit to this.

I helped my father with a project – we harvested the fir ourselves, then had a guy with a flatbed-truck mill come and mill it to dimensional specs. He was so good that he oversized it ever so slightly so that when it dried for 6 months, it was perfect. You would not believe how beautiful it was. Cost was slightly less than a lumberyard when all was said and done, but the quality was much better. It did have to dry out, stacked on stickers and under cover, for 6 months.

You will also have to hire an inspector for about $250 to come out and rubber stamp each piece of lumber.

You will note the image never appears on a 4,000 sq. ft. mega mansion. Repent, developer murderers!

Image of Virgin Mary grows on tree in Iowa

The mysterious image of what many are calling a perfect likeness to the Virgin Mary can be seen on the side of tree located at the intersection between 3rd Street and Bridge Road in Polk City, Iowa. A Nov. 14 report by KCCI 8 News explains that the shape in the tree is about 6 feet tall. It has residents asking what it really means.

RE:wreckingbull @ 3 – Any suggestions as to what would do well in a full sun, fairly well drained but poor soil environment? And please don’t suggest a pfft tree.

When we moved to our current house, we inherited a fig tree, Desert King variety. Definitely the king of figs in the Pacific Northwest. I’ve grown up with apple, plum and pear trees during my life, and I had never been impressed with store-bought fresh figs, but the fruit on our tree blew me away. The two or three weeks of fig season are a special time every August. The tree is self-pollinating and very prolific. I’m guessing ours is 20 years old or more.

I prefer living on the water, so zero trees for me. I hate wasting valuable time caring for a plant that will only grow and then die. That time is much better spent going to school, remodeling, working out, getting drunk, etc.

The question really depends on what type of tree you are talking about. We have several fruit trees in our North Seattle lot, including pear and fig and they are great. We also have a giant Ceder in the front that is a monstrosity. I get that we’re the evergreen state, but I would love nothing more than to be able to have the Ceder chopped and then replace it with a Chestnut or other non-evergreen tree so that we could get some light to the house in the winter. Understand that that is just wishful thinking under Seattle’s tree rules even if I wanted to replace the thing with another large tree. The tree wasn’t enough to make us not buy the house though.

RE:Mike @ 14 –
Like I said a year ago, show me the money and I will make that tree disappear. You could also just poison it and then wait for it to die. At that time, you could just say “I need to cut down this dead tree.” You are not being proactive.

RE:Erik @ 15 –
You don’t even have to do that. You just have the tree assessed as “hazardous” and let the city know that if they prevent you from removing this hazard that you will hold them liable if anything should happen.

Trees are kind of a pain to maintain. We had 4 fruit trees, removed 3, and the last one requires many hours of annual maintenance. The others were severely overgrown when we got the house. Only raccoons could reach the fruit, which they’d nibble on before tossing it on the patio. Rotten plums were getting tracked into the house and creating sticky spots on the carpet. We’ll probably add a few more fruit trees at some point, but any additions will be espaliered. I don’t want anything that requires a poll trimmer and ladder to maintain and harvest.

One of the neighbors threw a hissy fit when I removed a tree adjacent to his property line. Never mind it was planted on top of a crack in the sewer line.